Herewith, my annual Stupor Bowl Sunday post, supplemented with a properly curmudgeonly quotation from Edward 'Cactus Ed' Abbey for your reading enjoyment. Things were bad last year: the damn thing transpired in Phoenix. Luckily, it was far from where I dwell safe and snug in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains. This year the game is far away, but the Arizona Cardinals are in contention. Funny name, 'Cardinals.' What does football have to do with little birdies? Will I sneak a peek this year? Maybe. But I won't be able to take more than a few minutes of it. In any case, here is last year's post. I am tempted to add a rant about the misuse of taxpayer money for the construction of stadiums that are used only by some, but that can wait for next year.
I won't be watching the game. I don't even know which teams are playing. Undoubtedly there is more to football than I comprehend. But the games are nasty, brutish, but not short, and I know all I need to know about the implements of shaving.
As for the buxom wenches who strut their stuff during the half-time show, the less I stoke the fire below the better.
I am no fan of spectator sports in general. We have too many sports spectators and too many overpaid professional louts. I preach the People's Sports, despite the leftish ring of that.
Remove your sorry tail from the couch of sloth and start a softball league with your friends and neighbors. Play volley ball whether in a pool or on dry land. Engage your fellow paisani in a game of bocce. (But don't call it bocce ball. Do you call tennis tennis ball?)
Or take the Thoreauvian high road, leave the People behind, and sally forth solo into the wild. As Henry said, "A man sits as many risks as he runs." Old Henry puts me in mind of Cactus Ed, the Thoreau of the American Southwest.
In Vox Clamantis in Deserto Edward Abbey has it right:
Football is a game for trained apes. That, in fact, is what most of the players are — retarded gorillas wearing helmets and uniforms. The only thing more debased is the surrounding mob of drunken monkeys howling the gorillas on.